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Node.js vs Python – Where to Use and Where not?

In the growing era of IT and software’s, there are many options for a developer to choose between programming languages, when it comes to website or application development.

Although there are many languages available for website and application development, among all those languages; PHP, Python, Java, C++ and Objective C are majorly used.

Selection of programming language depends on the level of website or applications that needs to be developed.

Before initiating the creation of a website, proper planning is required. There are many companies and developers who start the website or application development without defined structure. It is very important to know about the pros and cons of language that they are going to use in the development. To get the work done fast developers often use frameworks for example in PHP, there
is many frameworks; such as Cake, CodeIgniter, Symfony etc. Whereas Java has Spring, Struts, Hibernate etc. which developers can choose.

In short there are handful of programming languages for developers to create applications and website.

Node.js and Python

Node.js is one of the most emerging platforms these days. Many development companies use Node.js for easily building the fast and scalable applications. It is built on JavaScript runtime, which makes it fast, efficient and easy to learn.

Since Node.js is based on JavaScript concept so developers from any background i.e. whether they are from Java or PHP; finds it easy to learn because JavaScript is something which every developers uses in their day-to-day life of development.
Python is a server-side, object-oriented programming language. Since its’ object-oriented and server-side language so developers from Java background may find comfortable switching into Python rather than PHP. To use Node.js and Python in development, developers must be aware of its’ proper usage i.e. Where and where not to use?

Why to use Node.js?

Node.js is purely based on JavaScript, which helps developers easy to learn and deploy. There are multiple occasions where Node.js can respond faster than Python because it uses JavaScript in backend. Event-driven architecture of Node.js is most appropriate for real-time applications such as games or chat application.
Being fast, scalable and efficient, Node.js increases the productivity of web application because it saves a lot of time. This concludes that you can get more profit from less number of employees.

PayPal once reported that productivity of developers has increased after they started using Node.js.What Node.js lacks?

Node.js is not suitable to use in large, complex web applications as it does not support multi-threaded programming, due to which it queues the incoming request and executes them sequentially. It causes application to hang or makes it slow in processing the request.

Everything in Node.js is asynchronous by default that means developers has to end the program using tons of call-backs, which is frustrating and time taking.
Unstable API of Node.js is one of the painful areas for developers. Node.js API keeps changing at frequent intervals. Sometimes a new API comes with lots of backwards-incompatible changes. The backward-incompatible changes make it essential for developers to change the existing code to make it compatible with the latest version of Node.js.

Why to use Python?

One of the most important feature of Python is its’ code. In python, developers need not to write a lengthy program to execute something. Python is a clean platform, where developers need to write only few lines of code if compared to other languages. Obviously if the code is less, than errors can be tracked and solved easily.

Python has multiple third party modules available that makes it interact with most of the other programming language easily. It has built-in data-structure which can be used to develop fast runtime data structure.

Looking at the language level, JavaScript lengthy and is hard to debug, while Python is expressive and beautiful. Python is great to use for a host of things on any machine and is considered as a feasible option for building complex multi-protocol network applications.

What Python lacks?

Python is an interpreted language so it is really very slow as compared to C, C++ or Java, and it cannot be used for applications which need to give faster response. Python being slow cannot be used for high definition 3D games, or anything involving lots of CPU consumption. In short it cannot be used for memory intensive tasks. Python lacks simple but very important libraries like in scanf,
printf etc. in C++. Python has no compile-time checks available, developer cannot know if he/she has done any type error until and unless the program goes in run-time phase.

Being advantageous in development speed, it is weaker in run-time performance.
It is very difficult for beginners’ to learn Python, as resources/tutorials are less as compared to other languages like Java, PHP or C++.

Conclusion
Node.js and Python, both are loaded with built-in interpreter. Node.js utilizes JavaScript interpreter whereas Python has PyPy as interpreter. From the above points; it can be concluded that no language can be good or bad. It completely
depends on the kind of product that is going to be released so that we can use language accordingly.

With an ability to learn and apply, passion for coding and development, Gagandeep Sethi has made his way from a trainee to Tech Lead at Promatics. He stands at the forefront of the fatest moving technology industry trend: hybrid mobility solutions. He has good understanding of analyzing technical needs of clients and proposing the best solutions. Having demonstrated experience in building hybroid apps using Phonegap and Ionic, his work is well appreciated by his clients. Gagandeep holds master’s degree in Computer Application. When he is not at work, he loves to listen to music and hang out with friends.

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